BrewDog Leeds

Just a quick one today. Mainly because its getting near the end of the month and I haven’t been out anywhere to eat.

I went to the New BrewDog bar in Leeds on Tuesday night and was impressed.

Firstly the place looks great I’ve included some pictures off the Brewdog website below (I didn’t get any of my own because I was to busy getting sloshed on 13% beer).

Also I have to recommend the staff, they were the most attentive bar staff I’ve ever come across and every pint was followed with “enjoy your beer”. They were also helpful in choosing what drink I wanted and coerced me into tasting 3 different beers before I picked, when all I asked for was the palest. Very helpful indeed.

The beers were all delicious and I drank plenty of stuff I wouldn’t normally touch, which is great. Prices were a bit high end, £4.20 a pint. Some of the 1/3 pints were £3.65 but you’re paying for the taste I guess.

But, It’s the kind of place you might take your lady friend to enjoy a drink, or maybe your dad for one. I wouldn’t go with the attention of having a heavy one as after 5 different drinks which came to a total of about 2 ½ pints in volume I was pretty full and sickly.

I expect it isn’t the intention of BrewDog for their customers to come down and enjoy copious amounts of alcohol and then go hit the town, but that was my mistaken intention on the first visit.

So get yourself down here and try some beers you wouldn’t normally drink. Some of there stuff is delicious and the men all have great beards, what more could you ask for.

(Oh and the played some Fleetwod Mac that’s worth 1 bonus point)
9/10

Unit 2, White Cloth Hall,Crown Street,
Leeds,
LS1 7RB.

www.brewdog.com

Crathorne Arms

I’m back at home (Aka Teesside) so as it was my lady friend’s birthday I took her to the Crathorne Arms in Crathorne village, North Yorkshire.

The Crathorne arms is under new management as of 6ish months ago and has had a refurb and new menu to boot.  I decided to go here based on the amazing pictures of the food on the restaurants new website. They’ve obviously spent a bit of money of food photography here because the dishes all look great and seeing as this is the only reason I went, I’d say its money well spent.

The venue has a rustic farmhouse appeal with polished dark wood floors, high beamed ceilings and plenty of country charm in a formal setting.

We skipped a starter with dessert in mind and ordered our mains, (once the waitress had stopped talking to another table across the dining room).

First up I had fillet of cod with gnocchi, battered muscles, cockles, samphire and creamy caper sauce. The fish was cooked perfectly as was everything else on the plate except the cockles which were like bullets. The dish was very rich and missing a squeeze of lemon or some more acidity, perhaps a little on the salty side as well, or is that just the sea I can taste?

 The second dish was Pork with black pudding and vanilla sauce. This was a woeful effort, dry pork, burnt caramel on the apple and an overly sweet very strong vanilla sauce. Pork and black pudding ice cream anyone?  . . . . . . . No? I didn’t think so. We called the waitress over to let her know about the burnt caramel and she said that is how the chef cooks this dish. Once we got the waitress away from her table of friends, we paid the bill and left.

This place has classic Tees valley syndrome when it comes to fine dining in the area. Just because the food offered is considered fairly up market it must be delicious by right and the clientele must be gob smacked by the occasion even if the food is shoddy and the service crap.

There are some decent venues to eat out in Teesside but they’re few and far between when it comes to exciting food. This place highlights the problem with many independent restaurants in the area.

5/10

Crathorne Village
North Yorkshire

TS15 0BA

http://www.crathorne-arms.co.uk/

In other news Brew Dog’s new Leeds bar is open WOOO! It’s tucked in behind the corn exchange next to Pizza express, I walked past last week and had a peer in and things looked far from finished but low and behold it opened last night. I shall be visiting in the next few days and let you know how it goes.

Boozy Brunch

Last weekend was pretty banging, I had a boozy brunch at Anthony’s at the Piazza in the Leeds corn exchange and followed it up with a backwards Otley Run (Pub crawl if your not local) out of town towards Headingley. I’m showing my student roots here.

The brunch deal we had at Anthony’s was bought off living social for £17 a person and got you; one breakfast, toast, hot drink, juice and a bottle of prosseco between two. I normally only buy deals of these websites if I’ve been to venue in question before so I know its not some greasy spoon masquerading as a Michelin starred restaurant.

The Food was good as ever at the Piazza, I’ve had breakfast here a few times and this place currently has my award for best eggs Benedict I’ve ever eaten. This time seeing as we’d already paid upfront and I’m a massive scruff at heart I got the most expensive thing on the menu which was the full English breakfast.

To start we had fresh fruit juice, which was ok. I opted for orange it was nothing special and not even a patch on a carton of Tropicana. This was followed by a glass of prosecco de dolci colline.  I don’t know much about wine or fizz, but I was expecting something which had fallen off the back of a van to be given to lowly living social deal customers. I was wrong it was nice plonk and I’ve had a look online and apparently this is a good value bottle of fizz from award winning, Claudio Manera? Whoever he is? It tasted great even if it was a bit early in the morning for alcohol.

With my head now suitably dizzy, breakfast arrived. Everything was nice; good quality sausage, tasty black pudding (the British kind, not the posh French boudin noir) and bacon which had been shown a bit of love. The baked beans were particularly good, which surprised me as i'm a bit of connoisseur when it comes to beans thanks to my dad’s obsession with them. You’d be amazed the variation between baked bean brands.

So seeing as it was all going so well, its time for me to have giant moan about one of my pet hates when it comes to fried eggs. Brace yourselves because this really pisses me off (I might suggest skipping this paragraph if you’re in a rush). The top of my yolk on my fried egg was translucent and raw, which in my opinion ruins the entire egg. You have to faff about scraping off the gelatinous mass just so you can dip your toast and by this point I’m normally in a bad mood. I once had a friend who told me he didn’t like fried eggs because they were raw on the top. When I asked him why he didn’t just cook the top he replied by telling me that he didn’t know you could do that with fried eggs (you know who you are)! This seems to be a recurring theme with me and breakfast, for heavens sake will someone just splash a bit of fat on the top or flip the thing over for 10 seconds, I don’t want my yolk cooked within an inch of its life, I just don’t want raw egg on the top.

Phew, rant aside everything else was lovely. The end of brunch was wrapped up with a cappuccino to perk me up, which was definitely required because I was falling asleep having drank half a bottle of Prosecco.

In conclusion everything was pretty good, as I said before I’ve eaten here for breakfast a few times and it’s always been good, you seriously need to try the eggs Benedict (I put some pictures up from the last time I went below). The venue is nice for an informal special occasion in the grandeur of the corn exchange or in my case to start of an impromptu pub crawl at 11:00am. No I don’t have an alcohol problem. Do I?

 

7/10 would have been 8 if not for the egg

anthonysrestaurant.co.uk/piazza

Corn Exchange
Leeds
LS1 7BR

0113 247 0995

Chadwicks Inn, Maltby, Teesside

A few weeks ago I was back in the North East and decided to visit Chadwicks Inn in Maltby village for lunch. Allegedly “the only 2 AA Rosette Gastro pub in the Tees Valley” or so it says on their website. Chadwicks used to be found on Yarm high street but moved about 2 years ago to Maltby site a few miles away.

The restaurant has a country pub vibe tastefully decorated with dark wood furniture and a log burning stove in the corner. This owes to the fact that it used to be pub not so long ago, but I wouldn’t come here for a cheeky pint nowadays.

We booked in advance and were promptly shown to our table and offered the menus. We both picked off the set lunch menu which was 3 courses for around £15-20, I forget the exact price.

First up was Pea soup with a poached egg and smoked bacon dressing. The soup was delicious, velvety smooth and fresh and the egg beautifully runny in the middle. However I didn’t get any smoked bacon from the dish, to be honest id be quite happy to just put two crispy pieces on the top. Bring on the bacon!!

My partner opted for the smoked salmon with quail’s egg and young onions. Which I’m told was very good, the young broad beans scattered about the place were a nice touch. This course also came on a slate which is pretty edgy for the Tees Valley. I bet the locals weren’t impressed? So far so good.

The final course was Pan fried sea trout with orange and fennel salad. The trout was cooked perfectly soft and moist in the middle with a lovely crispy skin but the salad seemed to have been dressed in water and there was no appearance from Mr Fennel, maybe they’d ran out? This really let the dish down. I love fennel but could have dealt with just a mixed leaf salad if it had some form of dressing to tie the dish together. Anyway the fennel was gone so I made do and quenched my thirst on my moist salad.

All in all I like this place, it’s about 1 mile from my parents and the lunch menu really is reasonably priced. I’d recommend it for those in the area that are after more than a trip to Frankie’s and Bennie’s, it’s probably slightly cheaper than most of the other “fine dining” alternatives around as well.

7/10

High Ln, Maltby
Middlesbrough

TS8 0BG

www.chadwicksinnmaltby.co.uk